Make Car Trips Learning Experiences

“If you’re kids are like mine the last thing they want to hear is the words “educational” or “learning” when we’re going on a day trip or vacation. So it’s up to mom and dad to keep their minds going. It does have to be boring. We love making up games on the way. The added bonus, it’s keeps the kids engaged and you hear less of “I’m bored” and “are we there yet?”

For the little ones:

1. We like to play the color game. Especially with my 4 yr old son. Since he does well with recognizing colors, this is a fun game for him. You can do this a few different ways.

–Playing an I Spy type of game. Ask your child “I see something red, do you see something red?” They might say “that sign” or “that light” or “on that McDonald’s.”

–Color search – You can say “find something blue” they might see a blue car, a blue sign, water, etc. Once everyone in the car found the current color, you can move onto another one. Let each person take a turn suggesting a color. Just a suggestion to stick with colors you might easily find to avoid frustration. Saying “find lime green” might be a lot harder than just finding “green”

2. Letter recognition. The alphabet game. My kids love this one. We make it through the alphabet and they want to start all over again. Start with the letter “A” and everyone in the car has to find the letter “A”. We set rules that you can’t use the same word in a sign. If it takes more than 10 or 15 min you move onto the next letter to keep them engaged and cut down on frustration. Little ones might say “there’s an A in that sign” Where readers can say “there’s an “O” in Johnstown”

picture by Jeffrey Vos @ flickr.com

3. Number recognition — Works the same way as the alphabet game but with numbers. Best to stick with 1 through 10. You could use commonly found numbers on the road like 25, 35, 55, 65 (in speed limit signs) or you can try to beat each other with who can find the biggest number along the way. 65 or 75 might seem big at first with speed limits but maybe you run across a mega millions sign with 40 million on it or one of those billboards that say things like “we’ve helped over 10,000 people” etc.”